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British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

This portrait was painted in 1817 at the time of Jane Hay's marriage to Col. Charles Fraser of Castle Fraser (1792-1871), County Aberdeen, Scotland. She was the fourth daughter of Sir John Hay, 5th Baronet, and bore her husband four sons and five daughters.

Jane Fraser (d. 1861) is seated, looking out directly at the spectator, who sees her from a viewpoint slightly below. Her dress is in the Empire style, its high waist defined by a gold sash just below her bosom. She wears a red velvet coat with ballooning, mutton-chop sleeves and a fur-trimmed collar turned down around her shoulders to reveal a yellow silk lining. She is posed on a balcony or terrace, with one fluted pillar behind her to our right. In the distance below, Scottish lochs and mountains are seen in the moonlight, silhouetted against a dark and turbulent sky. The landscape here is a precursor to that in the background of Lawrence's Charles William Lambton (1825, 54 x 44", Lord Lambton Collection) with its rocks and river seen from above at night.

Richard Dorment, from British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: From the Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Century (1986), pp. 196-197.